


Anachronism

by Doceo_Percepto



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Ficlets, Gen, POV Second Person, Sammy is a bit destructive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/pseuds/Doceo_Percepto
Summary: In which Sammy Lawrence is reintroduced to the real world, but he doesn't belong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> BATIM's atmosphere is always a very immersive one, going from the world we're used to to all those muted yellowish colors. I wanted to play around with the idea of going from the studio to the real world, for funsies.

This world is awash with color. _Over_ s _aturated_ with color. Lurid and bright and inescapably everywhere, no matter which way you look. It terrifies you.

New hues endlessly flare in the corners of your eyes and you whip around, heart racing, certain they must indicate danger – but they are simple objects, or clothing, or the sun, coming through the window and catching on a surface. It’s unbearable, maddening, _everywhere_. A ceaseless assault of pigment that, no matter which way you turn, never feels safe. Never feels like home.

Light, too, is painfully obtrusive, but your eyes can’t squint. You can’t choose not to see, not without removing your mask – and you are too afraid of that, of knowing this world is bearing down upon you and you are utterly blind to it. No. The mask stays on.

So you prefer to look at shadows. See, shadows… those you know. Shadows that move, and twist, and devour. In this world (the real world?) shadows are always moving, stalking at your heels, and the heels of everyone else, and nobody at all seems frightened of how they follow. Nobody except you.

But they also draw your attention. Sitting alone, pressed on all sides by a cacophony of screaming vibrancy, your eyes drift always to the corners of rooms, or beneath furniture. Anywhere the shadows are darkest. It’s comforting. Familiar.

… Hypnotic, even.

“Sammy.”

Henry. That’s what he calls himself, and it niggles at the back of your mind like an itch you can’t quite scratch.

Henry doesn’t like you looking at the shadows. His voice is scaredconcerned. He seems to know you, and know your name. He is the one who took you away from the studio, and at some point, you thought you wanted to be taken away.

That is until the color, and noise, and light, and no demons, no monsters, no angels. This world is so very different. With very different rules. No sacrifice. No God. No purpose. But a lot of fear.

Not fear like He used to bring. Not fear twining with divine purpose and glory, not fear that inspires you to sacrifice, to worship and give thanks-

“Stop,” Henry says, sharply.

You were whispering to yourself again. In the studio, only mindless monsters and the Ink Demon were there to hear you, and so nobody had ever minded the whispers. But Henry minds. He has strange rules.

“Sammy, look at me.”

You do. His face is ashen. It’s strange, too. Something like _her_. Not like Bendy. Not quite like anything you’ve ever seen. “Why did you take me away from Him, who has only been merciful?” you ask, and it’s a half-plea.

“He almost killed you,” Henry replies, as if he could possibly understand.

“He did kill me,” you counter. You had deserved it, surely. You don’t know what you did to displease the Ink Demon, but He is perfect, and would never do you any injustice. He killed you for a reason, you're sure.

The strange man sits beside you. “You don’t belong in the studio. You belong in this world. You were once human.”

That can’t be right. You have no place in this world. You need only see yourself in the mirror to know that. Your body is not human. You have no need for food, or water, or sleep. You can’t see without the mask affixed to your face. You do _not_ belong.

Sometimes, Henry draws back the curtains, and you see people outside. You see people like him, like how people are here, and it only brings you terror at the enormity and oddity of their existence. You don’t recognize any of them. There are no searchers. No clawing inky masses. No Alices. No Borises, which is stranger. There are usually more of those pathetic wolves than you can deal with. But no matter how long you watch those people walk by, none of them are right. None of them are familiar. They laugh and talk and nothing grabs them to drag them into darkness.

You are mystified. It can’t be that easy. It makes _you_ want to grab them.

“Sammy.”

The word is sharp. You were whispering to yourself again. It’s hard to control that.

He runs his fingers through his hair. He sighs, and looks around. He doesn’t know how to deal with you; you don’t know how to deal with him. “I can’t help you if you don’t try,” he says finally.

“I need only the help of my Lord.” But it scares you, how little bearing your Lord seems to have over this place. You are accustomed to him being everywhere. Breathing down your neck. Watching your every move. And here… his presence cannot be found.

“Stop that.” Henry stands up abruptly, and turns his back on you.

Your eyes follow. You wonder how easily you could strangle him. If you should.

“Stop it with the – the worship thing.”

You don’t know how to answer. How can you stop something that is part of you?

He laughs, and the noise startles you. His face is in his hands. “When I knew you, you wouldn't bow to anything,” he murmurs. “I know there’s still something left of you, Sammy Lawrence.”

“I never knew you,” you reply.

His hands fall. Your answer isn't what he wants. Solemnly, he says, “I have to return to work in two days. I can’t take any more time off.” He looks at you helplessly, as if you are somehow supposed to help.

You stare back through blank pie-cut eyes.

He can't look for long, and he leaves the room. Leaves you alone. Surrounded by color and light and all things that look far too real, too textured, too _wrong_. Your gaze returns to the shadows. You wish they'd swallow you up. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet again I just couldn't leave a story alone.

You are left alone. Henry had work, is what he said. You don’t entirely understand. He doesn’t work on the Bendy cartoons anymore; that is all you know, but it makes no sense. Your mind can’t wrap around this reality where his life is not about Bendy, where _everything_ is not about Bendy, where the world is not haunted, suffused with his glorious, malevolent presence.

Existence is maddening.

Now alone, you have nothing to distract you from it. Nothing to stop you from succumbing to its sick will, to its glaring and invasive colors and _realness_.

There’s no way to tell time here, except for the clock that only ever ticks in one direction, and you can’t make sense of that – so you don’t know how long it is after Henry leaves that you begin to think you can’t bear this any longer. It’s not long, you suspect, but you don’t understand time, least of all time here.

You pace, and look out the window, and the people disgust you, sicken you, their disgraceful happiness when they are so far from your God, in such a wrong, wrong world. So distant from Him. Where you truly want to be. Where you ache to be, like a quivering maggot in the palm of His hand, subject to His every whim, in a world familiar and haunted by Him. You must have that again. You must be with Him again.

But there are no easy answers here. This world makes no sense. You don’t know how to find your way back.

Instead, your fingers claw at your own body and tear away ink, your whispers crescendo to cries of worship and terror and longing. The walls close in on you, and it’s all empty empty _empty_

Your Lord is not in this place. He does not deign to grace this wretched realm with His glistening dark presence, and you have

Never

Felt

So

Alone.

Chunks of ink flesh splat to the floor and stain the carpet. You rip into yourself again and again, praising Him, begging Him to take you back, where the air is not thin and empty, but thick with the stench of ink, and where the walls pulse and murmur and the Machine beats its hypnotic rhythm in your skull -

You would rather die than spend another moment away from Him, away from the place you know, enveloped in familiar muted light and ink everywhere, on everything, in everyone. How things should be, how you ache for them to be! Where you could play a jumping tune to the thumping machine, back at your desk, at your recording studio, in your sanctuary, places familiar and beloved, where you belong. Sammy Lawrence, Music Director, striking up the band of moaning pitiful creations. Play or die. Play for our Lord.

But you are alone.

You. Are. Alone.

No matter how much inky flesh and innards you peel off or scoop away, your body reforms.

And the color invades. You can’t bear it any longer. Not for a single second longer.

Helplessly, frantically, you stagger through the rooms and halls; you open drawers and cabinets, you need – you need –

And then you find them: ink bottles. Henry said he was an animator, and this closet is dedicated to the art with which you have become intimate, the art that gave rise to your beloved Lord.

You take the bottles, and dump them on the floors. But it’s not enough. There are not enough bottles, not enough ink, not even with you having torn into your own body to add to the scene.

This isn’t home. Not close.

Next you find black paint. There’s a giddy, manic delight in smearing it over all the furniture. Drown the color! Kill it! Destroy it! You scrub it onto the walls, too, hard enough that your fingers come away with it and still you scrub with angry ferocity. Finally all the paint tubes are squashed into nothing. You go looking again.

Black charcoal pencils. But they only make thin weak lines and refuse to write on most surfaces. They drive you to aggravation and you snap them, one after one, like you’d snap the necks of those strange foreign people out the window, the ones who don’t know your Lord.

When you go looking again, you’re disgusted by the array of colors lined up in little paint tubes and jars. You smash and crush every one in the corner – their brightness burns but you keep it contained in a small area. All the black paint is gone; any remaining pencils you snap because they can do nothing.

But you find something that can be of use to you, and carry it to the foyer.

The Xacto knife nicely jams into the hardwood floor. A summoning circle for your Lord. That is what you should make – a place of worship, if nothing else.

It’s a tedious, scraping task, raking the knife over the hardwood over and over in some sketchy, jagged approximation of a circle, and by the time you get to the inner designs you’re seething and dripping ink in frustration. Color is still invading, but if you could have just this, just this one thing –

Then the door opens.

Something drops to the ground. A plastic bag with food.

“Oh, God,” Henry utters.

If only. If only your God were here.

But not all the paint, not all the ink, and not His circle could make you feel less alone.


End file.
